


Consent

by Mari



Series: Confessions [2]
Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Past Rape/Non-con, Rape Recovery
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-10
Updated: 2017-04-12
Packaged: 2018-09-07 17:23:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 6
Words: 13,158
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8809504
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mari/pseuds/Mari
Summary: “I wish I could... I want to take back the things he stole from me.”Tina didn’t have to ask who, or even what. Grindelwald had taken Graves’s reputation, his self-respect, his control over his own body.“So do it.”“Do what?”“Take something back,” Tina said.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> All sexual activity "on screen" is consensual, but past rape is referenced throughout. Take care of yourselves, readers.

( _"He put shackles on me.”_ )

* * *

Tina tried to keep her distance from Graves, to be just a friendly colleague, but it was hard. It was hard because Picquery’s office had been full of people that day, and though none of them had spoken openly, rumors were flying about Graves, about what had been done to him - what he _claimed_ , people said, insinuatingly - about what he might still be hiding. About what kind of a man he was, what kind of a future he could have at MACUSA, now that people knew. It was hard to keep her distance when she could see how much he needed someone on his side. But she had to trust that he knew, even without her reminding him. Trust that he didn’t need her to hold his hand every day.

And it was hard because that new awareness, the fresh understanding they had about each other, went both ways. Graves watched her, too. He looked, and looked, and every time she glanced up and saw his eyes on her she remembered him saying, “I’d rather look at you,” and the air between them felt electric, charged with potential. Tina’s skin tingled with it, and she would look away, and remind herself that it was better to wait. To give him time.

But it was only a few days before President Picquery sent her secretary down to collect Graves in person for a meeting, and as they walked through the bullpen, some sap hissed out, “Traitor!”

Graves’s back stiffened, but he kept walking. And when he came back from meeting with Picquery, hours later, he went straight to his office and shut the door.

Tina sent a note skittering off to Queenie to let her know not to wait up, and stayed at her desk redoing paperwork she had already finished until all of the other Aurors had gone for the night. She knocked on Graves’s door.

“What?” Graves snapped from inside.

“It’s me,” Tina called. “Are you planning to sleep here or what?”

The door swung open. Graves was sitting at his desk, reaching into a bottom drawer as Tina came in and shut the door behind her. He thunked a bottle of Ogden’s and two glasses down on the desk.

“So it was a good meeting, then,” Tina said. She came around and perched herself on the corner of Graves’s desk. She must have done it dozens of times before, giving reports on the progress of one investigation or another, but it felt different this time. She tried not to think about it.

Graves poured, and handed Tina a glass. “Picquery has generously decided not to dismiss me,” he said.

Tina choked a little on the sip of firewhisky she had just taken. “She _what_?”

Graves tossed back his own drink in one go. “It is actually a little generous. She made it clear that she trusts me, but not everyone was convinced. Veritaserum can be resisted, after all. And then there’s all the time I...was away. Missing things. Losing my edge.” He poured himself another. “I only agreed to the damned interrogation because she said my job depended on it. Now I’m not sure I even want it.”

“Your job?”

Graves nodded. He swirled the whisky around in his glass. “Half the people here think I’m a traitor, a pervert, or both. The rest just think I’m _weak_.”

“No,” Tina said. “Not everyone.”

“Close enough,” Graves said. He set his glass down and pushed it a little distance away from himself. “I wish I could... I want to take back the things he stole from me.”

Tina didn’t have to ask who, or even what. Grindelwald had taken Graves’s reputation, his self-respect, his control over his own body. She remembered how she felt after Al had done the same to her.

“So do it.”

“Do what?”

“Take something back,” Tina said.

Graves looked at her, and Tina felt that charge again, a current running from her body to his. If she wanted to give him time, she realized, she needed to leave the room. She stayed.

“Before, I used to think about--” Graves cleared his throat, but he kept his eyes on her face. “About having my hands tied. Sometimes.”

Tina smiled ruefully. “Well, Aurors.” It was an old joke, that all Aurors had an unnatural fascination with restraints. But it was often a little bit true.

“Aurors,” Graves agreed. He wasn’t smiling.

Tina took off the long, green silk scarf she had put on that morning to bring a little color to her blouse, and held it out to him. Graves took a deep breath, and extended his arms, crossed at the wrist. His hands shook a little as Tina looped the scarf loosely around his wrists, and she left the ends hanging free instead of tying a knot.

“Is this what you want?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said. His voice was low and breathless, and he seemed to be at least as anxious as he was aroused, but he tipped his face up and pressed his lips to hers without hesitation when she leaned down to him.

Tina slid into his lap, and ducked under his arms, and they kissed and kissed for what seemed like hours, while the ends of her scarf trailed over her back, and the tension slowly drained from Graves’s body.

Finally, Graves broke the kiss, though he stayed close, nuzzling at her neck. “Cash or check?” he murmured in her ear.

Tina could feel him, hard, against the back of her thigh. “Cash.”

“You live with your sister?”

Tina nodded.

“My place, then.”

Somehow, they disentangled themselves and left the building with some semblance of composure. They had only just stepped into the shadows of an alley when Graves grabbed Tina’s hand and pulled her Side-Along to what turned out to be a small, but tidy, apartment in a rooming house. Graves let go of her hand, and they stared at each other for a moment, hesitating. A lock of his hair, usually so neatly slicked back, had fallen over his forehead. Tina stepped forward and smoothed it into place.

The tension was broken. Graves covered her lips with his, bit at her mouth, and they pushed and tugged at resisting fabric until their clothes had fallen away. Tina stepped out of her shoes and Graves put an arm around her waist, and they fell onto his bed together.

Graves was thinner than Tina had expected, now that she saw him without the extra bulk of clothes. She ran a hand over his chest, down his taut abdomen, and wondered if he had lost weight when Grindelwald was keeping him captive. His muscles twitched under her hand, and she pushed the thought away, and kissed him.

He curved his hands around her waist, slid them upward over her ribs, stroked the sensitive skin under her breasts with his thumbs. “What do you like?” he said.

“I like that,” Tina said. Graves rolled his thumbs across her nipples, and she said, “And that. Your hands are…”

Graves licked one of his thumbs, touched her breast again. “Are what?”

“Big,” Tina said. “Strong.” She took one his hands and guided it between her legs. “I like this, too.”

Graves inhaled sharply, and slid his fingertips through the wetness he found there. “So I see.” He rubbed at her, worked his way inside.

Tina was no master of wandless magic, but it wasn’t hard to Summon something only a few feet away, even as distracted as she was. The scarf rose from the floor and swam through the air to her hand, and she showed it to Graves. His hands began to tremble against her, and he gave one full-body shudder.

“You can say no,” she said. “Now, or later. It’s your choice.”

“That’s why I’m saying yes,” Graves said. He put his hands - _Big_ , Tina thought. _And strong, yes_ \- on her waist, and guided her to straddle him as he rolled onto his back. He stretched his arms up, above his head.

Tina wrapped the scarf around his wrists, leaving some space between them. She left the ends loose, but crossed them in the center and pressed them flat to the mattress with her hand.

“Still yes?”

Graves flexed his biceps, and Tina pushed down harder, holding him.

“Tell me,” she said.

Graves shifted beneath her, the strong muscles of his thighs tensing, and Tina let the motion tip her forward, pinned him with both hands on the length of jade silk.

“Yes,” Graves choked out. His eyes were dark and wide, and his face flushed. When he rolled his hips, Tina could feel his arousal. She rocked back against him, and he groaned. “Do we have to take precautions?”

Tina shook her head. “I’m on the potion. You can’t knock me up.”

“Good,” Graves said, and Tina had to strain to hold his arms down as he surged up against her, and they twisted their hips together until she had taken him inside herself.

“Ah, Merlin,” Tina said. “You feel, oh…”

“Terrible time to say another man’s name,” Graves said. “I’m a little offended.”

Tina laughed, and then moaned as Graves planted his feet flat on the mattress and thrust up into her. “ _Percival_ ,” she said, with feeling.

“That’s better,” Graves said, and pushed into her again.

Tina rode him for a while like that, canted forward with her weight on her hands. Their faces were close together. They panted into each other’s mouths. It was good, so good, but, frustratingly, not _enough_. She slid her palms along the silk, covered his wrists. “Stay,” she said, pressing down, and when he nodded she straightened, sat tall above him, and touched herself where they were joined.

“Merlin,” Graves hissed. The muscles in his arms tensed and tensed again, but he kept his wrists where she had put them.

“Now I’m offended,” Tina said, smiling. She touched his mouth, and he said her name, over and over again.

Afterward, they curled together, and Graves played with the scarf, crumpling and twisting it as he told her everything that Grindelwald had done. Tina listened, and stroked his hair.

The poor length of silk would never be wearable again, but Tina couldn’t find it in herself to care about that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The "cash or check" reference is slang that essentially means "are we doing this now or not?", not a reference to payment.


	2. Chapter 2

(“ _He forced me to kneel. He used my mouth._ ”)

* * *

Tina’s lapse in judgement with the Barebone woman had largely been forgiven in the wake of her involvement with Grindelwald’s capture, but she had been reinstated as an Auror with the understanding that she would be under probation for a time, banned from contact in any official capacity with non-wizards. Rogers, Graves’s interim replacement, had assigned her a sticky case involving black market potion ingredients sales, which he deemed to be extremely unlikely to involve even one No-Maj, and which had the further benefit of being so frustrating a case that no one else wanted it. Perfect for an employee in moderate disgrace.

The main point of frustration was that the DMLE knew damn well who was selling the ingredients, but no one had been able to figure out yet how he was getting them, or, even worse, how he was passing them to clients. Blandinus Smith ran an entirely legitimate business creating and selling magic-tolerant pottery and ceramic housewares. He did a brisk trade, mostly with perfectly law-abiding customers. But the Aurors had identified several clients in the past who had overpaid for their sugar bowls and teapots and confiscated the items for inspection, finding--nothing. The goods were always empty, their packaging was mundane, and the delivery boy had never dropped anything additional off at the same time. The last Auror on the case before Tina had ordered some expensive tests of the glaze on one very improbably priced teacup, but turned up nothing.

Standard investigative wards had been covertly placed around Smith’s business (which conveniently doubled as his home, with living space on the upper floors), and there were no inexplicable Apparations, Portkey usages, or any of the things that smugglers sometimes did to move products. Auror contacts in the underworld had been unhelpful. There were no leads to follow. So Tina had been doing the only thing she really could, in between legwork on other, smaller cases - surveillance, hoping for a break.

Smith worked on big batches of his standard wares for most of each month, but he habitually did more intricate, custom work in the last week. Tina thought that if she was ever going to figure his system out, keeping an eye on him during that critical week was her best chance.

Smith had excellent wards of his own (due to his proprietary processes, he claimed), and previous attempts by other Aurors to do active magical surveillance had been detected and thwarted. So Tina had spent several days carefully layering charms on a handful of innocuous, tiny objects - bits of paper, a small stone, one end of a broken bootlace - which she hid in her pocket before putting on a shiny ring and making a visit to Smith’s storefront. She pretended to be a bride shopping for a dinner service for her marital home, which gave her plenty of opportunity to wander around the storefront and place her passive surveillance “bugs” (she had considered using actual bugs, but putting persistent charms on living things was a little beyond her abilities). She couldn’t land any in the workshop behind the store, but if her gambit paid off even a little, she figured, she could try to come up with an excuse to see the works themselves and plant a few more on a future trip.

In the meantime, she was at least getting more information than the last guy on the case, even if she did have to spend several hours a day sitting in the diner around the corner monitoring her bits and bobs while pretending to read magazines. After three days, she’d drunk enough coffee that she thought she might never sleep again, and she was absolutely, positively sure that Smith was their man. Which she’d known going in. 

But it was a start. And Tina knew now that a storage shed in the pottery yard had been Imperturbed, though it was so skillfully done that she hadn’t picked up on the existence of the spell itself - just noticed that if Smith was whistling to himself when he went in, the sound cut off abruptly, only to resume as soon as he came out again.

She could probably get authorization for a raid on that evidence alone, Tina reflected as she walked into the Woolworth Building after a long morning of bug-watching. But if they didn’t find the evidence they needed after all, the already-wary Smith would no doubt find a way to wriggle free of any charges. She needed to catch him a little closer to the act. And, all right, she desperately wanted to know how he was doing it.

Distracted by plans for how to get some bugs closer to where Smith did his actual work, Tina made her way in to work and the Auror’s bullpen, where she was startled out of her thoughts by what felt like a wall of tension as she stepped out of the elevator. It was unusually quiet on the floor, those of Tina’s colleagues who were in the building sitting at their desks with their heads down, getting work done. No one was tossing ideas back and forth, or telling a story about a recent arrest, or even talking Quidditch.

“What’s going on?” Tina asked O’Brien as she sat down at her desk across from him.

“Someone vandalized Graves’s office,” O’Brien said, keeping his voice low. “Smashed it up, wrote some nasty things on the door. Charmed it so it won’t scrub off. The furniture is all fixed up, but the paint is still on there.”

“Some poor sap has a death wish,” Tina said.

O’Brien shrugged. He was a good man, Tina thought, and the sort who could be an ally against the stupidity that was centering on Graves, but he was also getting on in years, and thinking about retirement. It was understandable that he just wanted to mind his own potatoes and stay out of the whole business.

She let the matter drop, and told O’Brien about her progress with Blandinus Smith while she organized her notes into a report. He returned the favor with a story about an arrest he’d made the day before of a wizard who, annoyed by his No-Maj neighbors, had taken to conjuring an eight foot tall, ghostly image of a chicken to terrorize them at night in the hopes they’d move away.

“But why a _chicken_?” Tina asked, when she’d finished laughing.

“Well, it may have been a rooster,” O’Brien said. “I think it was related somehow to a noise complaint that started the whole feud, but he wasn’t what I’d call rational on the subject.”

“What did you do about the No-Maj neighbors?”

“I filled out the form for the No-Nos,” O’Brien said, using the term that Aurors favored for razzing the unfortunates of the No-Maj Obliviation department (“Those who can, become Aurors; those who can’t, work for the NMO”). “But I think they’ll probably just leave them alone. Plenty of No-Majs think they’ve seen ghosts even without a wizard involved.”

“I bet there aren’t many who’ve seen the ghost of a giant chicken, though,” Tina said. She raised her voice to carry a little, saying, “What do you think, Jackson? Would you move out of your house because of a chicken haunting?”

“Depends if it’s actually a chicken,” Dolores Jackson called back from a few desks over. “Ghosts don’t bother me at all, but birds give me the heebie-jeebies.” She shuddered dramatically. “Those _talons_. Ugh.”

“I’d take a chicken ghost over a human ghost any day,” Reg Brown said, as he walked by Jackson’s desk. “It’s the endless chin music that gets to me with ghosts. Nobody cares about your three hundred year old gossip!”

A general argument broke out about whether ghosts could ever provide useful intelligence or not, and Tina smiled to herself as the noise level in the room rose to normal. She finished her report on the Smith case and decided to hand it in personally.

The renewed conviviality of the bullpen did not extend to Graves’s office, where the door was firmly closed. The graffiti was smeared and faded, but still clinging tenaciously to the wood. Tina frowned at it, and knocked.

“Come in!” Graves wasn’t quite snapping, but it was close.

Tina slid into the room and let the door close again behind her. “I think ‘cocksucking bigot’ is kind of inconsistent, don’t you?”

Graves had been looking thunderous, but that surprised an amused snort out of him. “I suppose it is.” The spark of humor faded quickly from his face, and he rubbed his forehead tiredly.

“Hard day?” Tina asked. 

“I’ve had better. Where have you _been_?”

“Doing my job,” Tina said sharply. She set her report down on the desk.

“Right,” Graves said. “Sorry. I…”

“Wanted a friendly face?”

Graves nodded. He picked up the report and started looking it over.

“You might have more friends out there than you think,” Tina said.

“This is good work, Goldstein,” Graves said. “Very innovative use of charms. Keep at it.”

Tina sighed. “Will do, boss.”

“Tina,” Graves said, stopping her just before she opened the door, “do you, ah. Would you--”

“Queenie is going out dancing tomorrow night,” Tina said. “She’ll be out real late.”

“Oh?”

“You could come up and see my etchings,” Tina said.

Graves huffed out another not-quite-laugh. It felt like a victory. “Are they very fine etchings?”

“You’ll have to come and see for yourself,” Tina said archly, letting herself out.

* * *

They met outside a No-Maj automat a block away from Mrs. Esposito’s brownstone. Tina took Graves’s arm before there could be any awkwardness about whether they should kiss hello or not, and led the way. “You’ll have to be quiet on the way up,” she said. “I’m not supposed to have male visitors.”

Graves gave her a dubious look, but slipped in the front door behind her and kept his tread on the stairs light. They made it to the second floor with no incident.

“Mrs. Esposito is okay,” Tina said, closing the door of the apartment behind her. She took off her hat and coat and hung them up. “She doesn’t charge us much, and we have this whole floor. She has just the two rules, though - no Apparating and no men.”

“That seems very inconvenient,” Graves said.

“It doesn’t usually come up,” Tina said. “Can I take your coat?” Graves shrugged out of it, and she hung it on the hook next to hers. 

“My landlord isn’t so picky.”

“But I have more comfortable furniture,” Tina said. It was true, even if the sofa didn’t match the armchair, and the place was a little shabby and cluttered. Tina had tidied up as much as she could that morning before leaving, but she’d had to wait until Queenie had gone first, or face her sister’s too-knowing looks. She used her wand to dim the lights. “Come and see.”

Graves obediently followed her to the sofa, and they necked for a while as Tina gradually peeled back the layers of his suit. Graves busied his hands caressing her neck, her shoulders, her breasts. He gently bit her earlobe as she slipped one of his suspenders down over his arm, and whispered, “So where are the etchings?”

Tina leaned back so that he could see it when she narrowed her eyes at him. She had known on some level that reserved, serious Graves must have a sense of humor - didn’t everyone, however deeply buried? - but his willingness to be frivolous, even a bit silly, was a surprise.

“How do you feel about pearl diving?” she asked, and watched Graves’s face change from amused to intent in an instant.

“I’m in favor,” he said.

Tina picked up a throw pillow, rose-colored velvet, with some indifferent embroidery on one side, and set it on the floor at her feet. “Do you want to kneel for me?”

Before she had finished asking, Graves was getting on his knees. “ _Yes_ ,” he said, as he pushed up the hem of her skirt.

Tina had worn her prettiest drawers, dressing that morning with an anticipatory little thrill. Graves ran a finger under the lace trim on one leg, and pressed a kiss to her inner thigh through the orchid-colored crepe de chine.

“Swanky,” he murmured. “You got dolled up for me?”

Tina’s cheeks were hot. She felt as though her entire body was blushing. “Maybe,” she said.

Graves looked up at her as he kissed his way higher, slid his hands up her thighs and pulled her drawers down inch by inch until she was bared to him. Tina ran her fingers through his hair, tugging gently, and he leaned in and put his mouth on her, started to take her apart with lips and tongue.

“ _Oh_ ,” Tina said, as he teased her pearl with the tip of his tongue, and, “yes, yes, more of _that_ ,” when he dipped his tongue inside her.

And then she couldn’t speak at all, only make broken noises and twine her fingers more tightly in Graves’s hair as he licked and kissed and sucked. His eyelids fluttered shut, lashes dark smudges against his skin. He palmed himself through his trousers, adjusting the bulge of his erection.

Tina felt another wave of pleasure, knowing that he was enjoying what he did to her. “Do you want to touch yourself?” she gasped. “Go ahead.”

Graves made an urgent sound that she felt as much as heard, and fumbled at his waist. His shoulders blocked her view, but when his arm began to move rhythmically Tina could picture his hand on his cock, strong fingers gripping and sliding, thumb swiping across the head as he stroked.

It was enough to push Tina over the edge, and she shuddered into her climax. Graves licked her through it, and when she was still, turned his face to rest against her thigh, breath hot against her slick skin as he brought himself off.

When they both had stopped panting, Tina urged Graves back up beside her, where she kissed the taste of herself out of his mouth. There was no urgency to it, both of them satiated and a little sleepy from it, and the kisses gradually tapered off as they found a comfortable position on the sofa, tangled together and half-reclining.

“Maybe I should resign,” Graves said, with his lips against Tina’s jaw.

“Mm,” Tina said, though inside she was screaming a denial. “Is that what you want?”

“No. But I’m not sure I actually have a choice.” He paused. “It might be the right thing to do, for the department. For MACUSA. People have… Lost confidence in me.”

“Why did _you_ become an Auror?” Tina asked.

Graves’s answer was as immediate as hers had been. “For justice. I have abilities, skills. I wanted to do right.”

Tina opened her hand to him. _And there you have it_.

Graves kissed her neck. “It’s not that simple,” he said.

Tina smoothed his hair back. She had made quite a mess of it. “I don’t think I said it was.”

* * *

Tina was at her desk early the next day, sketching out a plan for placing her surveillance bugs with the help of actual bugs. Or possibly rats. Vermin, anyway. She had suddenly thought of it while brushing her teeth, had hurried through the rest of her morning routine, and rushed in to work without even stopping for breakfast. She had discarded the idea of using living creatures for her layered surveillance charms at the beginning because she didn’t think she could make them persist on anything that wasn’t inert - but if she could charm inanimate objects that small, innocuous animals could _carry_ , she could get them into spots in Blandinus Smith’s pottery that she couldn’t access on her own. 

She was in the middle of filling out the sheaf of forms required for authorized uses of the Imperius Curse - there were other ways she could get her proposed animal helpers to cooperate, but _Imperio_ would be quick and simple, and wouldn’t do any damage - when her colleagues started to shuffle in.

O’Brien paused next to her desk. “Did you see the _Ghost_ this morning?” he asked quietly.

“We don’t subscribe. Why?”

He handed her a copy of the paper, folded open to show an editorial cartoon. The picture featured a grotesque parody of Grindelwald, with bulging eyes and an evil leer, holding the control bar of a marionette that was helpfully labeled as “Director P. Graves” for readers who wouldn’t recognize the puppet’s thick brows and high forehead as a caricature of Graves. The drawing of Grindelwald wiggled the bar, making the puppet-Graves flop around pathetically on the ends of the strings. The cartoon was captioned, “ONCE A PUPPET…?”

“Mercy Lewis,” Tina said faintly.

O’Brien shook his head in disapproval. “That’s too far, if you ask me. People ought to have some respect for a-- Oh, Director Graves. Good morning, Sir.”

The warning didn’t come quite in time to keep Tina from jumping in her seat as Graves himself leaned over her shoulder to see what she was looking at. The scent of him - the sandalwood soap he shaved with, the vanilla in the pomade he used, the _him_ underneath it all - surrounded her, and Tina felt herself blushing for more than one reason.

Graves chuckled, and straightened up. “That’s just absurd,” he said, loud enough to carry through the suddenly very quiet room. “What kind of self respecting dark wizard would use strings when he has a perfectly good wand?”

Graves sauntered to his office through the stunned silence like it wasn’t happening, sat down at his desk, and picked one of the memos clamoring for his attention to unfold.

He left the door open.


	3. Chapter 3

( _"He would force my mouth open with his thumbs. Sometimes that was all. He just wanted me to know he could."_ )

* * *

Graves kept his door open the next day, despite another insinuating column in the _Ghost_. Tina could see tension in the corners of his mouth, but he was putting on a good show of being his old, confident self.

Unfortunately, he couldn’t control his involuntary responses. He had stopped on his way to the elevator for a word with Jackson about one of her cases, and his attention was all on her when Hanssen, a newly-minted Auror with a shock of the kind of white-blond hair usually seen on very young children, pushed by him in a rush. Graves flinched hard, his hand going to his wand before he could regain his composure.

Hanssen didn’t pause as he walked by, but he did sneer. “Sissy,” he muttered.

Graves rounded on him at once. “What was that, Auror?”

Hanssen, to his very limited credit, didn’t pretend not to have spoken. He turned to face Graves. “I said ‘sissy.’ _Sir_.”

“And if I am?” Graves said. “Are you going to do something about it?”

Hanssen had a reputation for being hard-boiled already, and an urgent need to prove himself, but he wasn’t stupid. He hadn’t counted on being called out for his behavior, and Tina - and everyone else - could see that he was struggling to find a way out that didn’t involve dueling Graves.

Graves raised his eyebrows expectantly, but Hanssen didn’t have an answer for him. “Shall I tell you what I think about _you_ , Hanssen? I think you’re ignorant, and a bully. And I don’t have room for either of those qualities in my department. Consider yourself on probation - you have thirty days to change my opinion of you.”

He walked to the elevator, gave Red the floor number, and was gone.

“Aw, don’t worry, Hanssen,” Jackson said. “I hear the No-Nos have an opening.”

* * *

The approval for the use of _Imperio_ had come through, so Tina spent the rest of the morning catching roaches. She put them in a handbag she was probably never going to be able to use again, and spent her afternoon trying not to be conspicuous as she wandered around near Blandinus Smith’s place, pausing to pretend to window shop periodically as she piloted her bug-carrying bugs into his pottery. She had the roaches plant a couple of surveillance pebbles - best to have backups, she thought - in each of several promising locations. She even sent a few up the stairs to Smith’s living space, just in case. Then she went to the diner where she had inadvertently become a regular, and checked to see that the bugs were all functional while she devoured a hot sandwich.

Prolonged wand work always left her ravenous, but the headache she was developing was new. It was a good thing she didn’t ordinarily have much call to use the Imperius Curse, Tina thought. She’d make a terrible dark witch. She lingered over a few cups of coffee, waiting for the headache to ease, and got back to the Woolworth Building late. By the time she’d finished updating her file on Smith with her notes about the day’s work, everyone else on the floor had left for the night.

Well, almost everyone.

Graves was still at work, signing off on paperwork and using his wand to send it skittering off to its next stop in the bureaucratic cycle. When he saw Tina in the doorway of his office he leaned back, smiled, and spun the wand around his thumb, showing off like a schoolboy.

“It’s late,” Tina said. “Everyone’s gone home.”

“You’re still here,” Graves pointed out.

“I had paperwork to finish.”

“Likewise,” Graves said. He signed and dated the last form on his desk and enchanted it into a rat. “Personnel files. Hanssen, J.” he told it.

“Are you really putting him on probation?”

“I don’t believe in empty threats,” Graves said. “And I was serious about doubting his suitability for the job. We can’t have Aurors who think it’s acceptable to prey on those weaker than themselves.”

“You’re not weak,” Tina said.

“Whether I actually am or not isn’t the point.” Graves shrugged, a bitter smile on his face. “Though Hanssen was only saying out loud what others are whispering.”

_Or writing_ , Tina thought. But she kept that to herself. “You’re not weak,” she said again.

“Do you want a drink?” Graves opened the drawer in his desk where he kept the Ogden’s.

“No thanks,” Tina said. “Do you?”

Graves looked steadily at her. He pushed the drawer closed again. “Not really.”

Tina stepped into the room. “Did you want something else?”

Graves gestured with his wand, then set it down while the door behind her clicked shut. He pushed his chair back from the desk a little, but didn’t get up as Tina approached.

Tina touched the side of his face. “No?”

“Yes,” Graves said. He caught her hand and kissed her fingertips. “Yes.”

Tina straddled his lap, wishing that his chair didn’t have arms, and that she hadn’t worn a dress that day instead of her usual trousers and blouse, but ready to make the best of it. She touched his face, tracing his features with her fingertips: eyebrows, nose, cheekbones, jawline. She pushed gently at his lips and when he opened his mouth she slipped her thumb between them. He nipped at her, playfully, but she wrinkled her nose at him and pressed inside.

“Okay?” she asked.

Graves quirked an eyebrow at her, his lips pursed around her thumb, and pinched her bottom.

Tina suppressed a squeal, but did jump a little, almost losing her balance. Graves curved his hands around her hips, catching her, and gave her an apologetic caress.

“Just for that...” Tina said, and replaced her thumb with two fingers, putting her other palm against his jaw to hold him still.

Graves tensed, teeth pressing against her, though he didn’t quite bite. He looked at her face, seemed to will himself to relax.

“Do you want me to stop?” Tina asked.

Graves shook his head, a minute motion against her hands.

“You should probably suck, then,” Tina said.

Graves sucked. He pulled her fingers into his mouth, exploring her skin with his tongue.

It reminded Tina of the pearl diving expedition, and her voice was a little husky when she said, “Attaboy.”

Graves slid his hands down and back, cupping her derrière, kneading her flesh in time with his sucking. He opened his mouth, and she ran her thumb across his lower lip before pushing back inside.

She was surprised by her own response. Graves was breathing quickly through his nose, but her breath was almost as fast. She had never thought of her fingers as particularly sensitive, before. But when Graves touched her through her drawers, he found her already wet, the silky fabric slick against her folds.

He made an appreciative noise, and worked his hand under the waistband, sliding his fingers through her wetness before slipping one inside her. He rubbed her pearl with his thumb, and began to stroke in and out. Tina echoed the motion with her fingers in his mouth, and he closed his eyes and moaned around her. She rocked against his hand, and he sucked harder, and put another finger in.

Tina could feel the delicious tension winding tighter and tighter in her, and she sped her hand and her hips both, grinding down against Graves. The angle was terrible, and it had to be hell on his wrist, but he rubbed and rubbed and sucked and sucked and finally Tina said, “Three. Give me three.” And he did, and she felt the stretch, the fullness, and he opened his mouth wider for _her_ third finger and she climaxed, hard, feeling as though her entire body had been Transfigured into one naked, pleasurable nerve.

Before she had finished shaking with it, Graves had his hands around her waist, lifting her bodily off his lap and spinning her around before bending her over his desk. He hiked her skirt up and shoved her drawers down. She could feel frantic motion behind her - Graves undoing his fly, she assumed - and then the head of his cock pressing in. And then he stopped, his hands gripping her hips almost painfully tight.

“I never asked, do you, is this something you like?” Graves stuttered out. “Being penetrated?”

“Fuck me,” Tina said. “Please.”

“Oh thank God,” Graves said, and slammed into her.

Tina braced her arms against the desk just in time to avoid being shoved into it, and pushed back. It was hard, and fast, and red hot. And then Graves put one of his hands between her legs, pushing her against him with his fingertips exactly where she needed them, and it was _perfect_. Another orgasm ripped through her, and Graves rode her through it until he couldn’t anymore, tensing and shuddering with his own release. 

Tina relaxed her arms and let herself collapse onto the desktop. Graves nuzzled the back of her neck, idly rolling his hips even though he was already softening inside her.

“Do you feel weak now?” Tina asked. “Insufficiently masculine?”

Graves chuckled, and kissed the skin right behind her ear. “You little bearcat,” he said fondly. “Are you like this with all your lovers?”

“There haven’t been that many,” Tina said.

Graves stilled. “Oh? But you seem so...confident.”

“I’m a modern woman,” Tina said. “And I have a good imagination.”

Graves chuckled again. “And how.”

They disentangled themselves and put their clothing to rights amidst a flurry of cleaning charms, and somehow ended up back in Graves’s desk chair, though Tina was sitting across his lap this time and not trying to balance on her knees.

Graves ran his fingers through her hair. “How many is not many, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“Oh, well. I had a couple of boyfriends at school, but that was only petting. A few years ago, there was one fellow I was pretty serious about. Varius.” Tina smiled in reminiscence. “We got to know one another after he made a joke about our parents’ poor judgement regarding names.”

“What happened?”

Tina shrugged. “He wanted to get married, settle down and have children. I wanted to be an Auror. I haven’t had much in the way of romance since then.”

“Ah.” Graves’s hand in her hair paused. “Does that mean that the No-Maj who… You were a virgin?”

“Yes.”

Graves tightened his arms around her, as though he could protect her past, adolescent self. “You were very brave, to be intimate with someone. After that. I’m not sure I would be able to if I didn’t, ah, have fond memories from before.”

“And you’ve had lots of fond memories, have you?”

“More than you, anyway.”

“Well, it only makes sense,” Tina said teasingly. “You’re almost twice my age, after all.”

Graves tugged a lock of her hair. “Ouch. Are you saying I’m old?”

“No, no. Just old _er_.”

“I’m not twice your age,” Graves said.

Tina looked at him with widened eyes. “Oh, aren’t you in your fifties?”

Graves growled. “I’ll bend you back over that desk and show you I’m not past my prime yet if you’re not careful.”

“Didn’t you say you don’t believe in empty threats?” Tina said, and then, as Graves made to lift her off his lap, “No, no, don’t! I couldn’t possibly.”

“Well, if _you’re_ too tired,” Graves said, subsiding. “But I could, you know. If I wanted to.”

“I have perfect faith in you,” Tina said.

“Good,” Graves said. And then, “Do you smell smoke?”

They hurried out of his office, following the scent to the Auror’s bullpen, where Tina had left her coat and other things at her desk.

Her handbag was on fire.


	4. Chapter 4

(" _Sometimes I feel like I’m still being held captive. Isolated. I haven’t been able to talk to anyone about any of it, except you. I haven’t even spoken to anyone in my family, just sent vague letters saying not to come, not to worry. That I’m fine._ ") 

* * *

The flames shooting out of Tina’s handbag were purple, not that she needed any confirmation that it wasn’t a normal sort of fire.

“What the hell?” Graves said.

“My _Weird Tales_!” Tina yelped, seeing her carefully calibrated bug-watching magazine in the middle of the conflagration. She darted forward and snatched at the cover, pulling it free of the handbag only to drop it again immediately. The magazine wasn’t at the center - it _was_ the center of the fire. She shook her hand, violet sparks dropping from her fingertips to smolder on her desk.

“Goldstein!” Graves snapped. “Oh, for fuck’s sake.”

He held his hand out and his wand zipped out of his office and slapped into his palm. Recalled to sense, Tina drew her own wand, and between the two of them they soon had the fire out.

Tina had already resigned herself to the loss of the handbag after transporting roaches in it that morning (she had cleaned it, and planned to clean it again, but it would never _feel_ clean), so the charred leather didn’t upset her much, and the bag had been nearly empty. She hadn’t been carrying any paper money, and the coins ought to be all right. The blackened and curled magazine was the real loss.

“What’s a _Weird Tales_?” Graves asked. He spread what was left of the magazine out flat on her desk, frowning at it.

The lurid illustration on the cover was still mostly intact, showing a masked man holding an unconscious woman in a white gown, while another man brandished a rapier. The cover story was “The Supreme Witch,” which Tina had found very funny while she was charming it.

“It’s a No-Maj magazine. Fantasy stories. I was using this one in the Blandinus Smith case, to view my passive surveillance doohickeys.”

Graves’s mouth twitched, but he didn’t give in to a smile. “Is that the technical term?”

“It is if I say it is,” Tina said. She sighed. “It took _forever_ to get the magazine calibrated. And I had two stories left to read.” At least she’d done the serials first.

“Pleasure reading probably shouldn’t be your top concern right now,” Graves said. “I think it’s safe to conclude that Smith did this.”

Tina nodded. “I’m going to have to figure out how to replace my bugs. And make them harder to detect, I guess. It will probably take a few days to get some more ready, plus a new magazine...”

“Goldstein. Has it occurred to you that this might have been an attack, and not just sabotage?” Graves picked the _Weird Tales_ up by the least-singed corner, and almost half of what was left crumbled away at once. He raised his eyebrows.

“Oh,” Tina said. “It has now.” If Smith had known what would happen to the item linked to her bugs when he had acted to eliminate it, he was at the very least completely unconcerned about her wellbeing. If she’d been _holding_ the magazine… Well.

Graves sighed. “Go ahead and make your doohickeys. But don’t place them until you get clearance from me. You’ll probably need backup.”

“Right,” Tina said. “I’ll start on the bugs in the morn-- Oh, no, what time is it?” She looked at the clock on the wall that showed local time. “Rats. I’ve got to get home. Queenie will be frantic.”

Until recently, they’d always been home within minutes of each other every night, except in special circumstances, and even then they always remembered to send word. Queenie had been less attentive to that herself, lately, for reasons that Tina was trying hard not to know, but that didn’t mean Tina felt good about making her sister worry without cause.

Although maybe there was a _little_ cause. She poked at the magazine again, and decided to leave the whole charred mess on her desk, to be dealt with in the morning.

“I’ll walk you out,” Graves said.

In the end he accompanied her almost all the way home, and stood on the corner across the way from Mrs. Esposito’s to watch her get in the door. Tina wasn’t sure if it was because he was reluctant for their time together to end, or because he was concerned Smith might try something more direct, but she didn’t mind either way. She considered blowing him a kiss, but waved instead, and then hurried up to the second floor, and Queenie.

Who was, as she had predicted, a little frantic.

“Teenie! Where have you-- Is that _soot_? What happened? A _fire_?” Queenie’s hands were fluttering all around, the wand in one already heating water for coffee, while with the other she assured herself that all of Tina’s extremities were still attached. “Oh, your poor handbag!”

“Please don’t read my mind,” Tina said, like she always said, and it did about as much good as it ever did.

“He walked you-- But why-- Oh, Porpentina.” Queenie frowned. “What are you _doing_?”

“Don’t,” Tina said. Her sister had to have known at least a little bit before, and the way she acted as though it was completely shocking was as irritating as the Legilimency itself. “Just don’t, Queenie.”

“He’s your _boss_!” Queenie threw so much emphasis into the word that Tina could hear all the parts she wasn’t saying, also: He’s too old for you. He comes from money, you know, not like us. What will you do when he’s tired of it? He’s _damaged_.

“Queenie, I know you’re seeing Jacob Kowalski!” Tina shouted.

Her sister recoiled as though she’d slapped her. Her hand went to her mouth. Her eyes were wide.

“I’m not going to report you,” Tina said. She collapsed into their armchair. “How could you think I would?”

Queenie’s eyes were wet, but she didn’t quite cry as she sank down onto the edge of the sofa. “You got in trouble once already. I would just hate myself, Teenie, if you got in trouble again and it was my fault. But I was already hating myself. Knowing he was out there… I love him.”

“I figured,” Tina said. They were both impulsive, probably the only quality they really had in common, but that wasn’t the same thing as careless. Queenie wouldn’t have kept in contact with Jacob without a good reason. “What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know.” Queenie sniffled, shrugging helplessly. “I don’t know. I only wanted to see that he was happy. Just wanted to see him one more time, and know he was okay. But when he looked at me, he remembered. And then what was I supposed to do, Obliviate him all over again?”

“Well, yes. Or better yet, report it and let a specialist do it.”

“Teenie.”

“Do you want to marry him?”

Queenie always smiled so easily. Had since she was a baby, and nothing could stop her, not even losing their parents. But the smile she wore in that moment was as delicate, as uncertain as a spiderweb in a windstorm. “I do. If he’d ask me. I really do.”

“Would you give up magic for him?” It had been done before. If someone was determined to live as a No-Maj, MACUSA would turn a blind eye. Until they had children, at least.

But Queenie was something of a special case. “You know I can’t. I’ve never been able to control it--” she waved her hand near her temple “--like that. Even if I could give the rest up.”

Tina rubbed her face. She thought she might start crying, herself, any minute. “I guess you need to find out how Jacob would feel about emigrating, then,” she said thickly. “I don’t see another way out of this.”

Queenie bit her lip, not the way she did when she was flirting, but the way she did when she was trying to stop it from trembling. “I don’t want to leave you.”

“I don’t want it, either,” Tina said. “But I think I always knew you weren’t destined for spinsterhood.”

“Oh, honey, neither are you!” Queenie said. “You’re a real catch, even if you don’t see it.”

Tina waved her hand at that. “I just mean, it was going to happen someday. Maybe not as big as moving to another country, but we were always going to wind up in different houses eventually.”

Queenie sniffed again. “I guess so. I just wish…”

“If wishes were broomsticks, No-Majs would fly,” Tina said.

Queenie smiled shakily. “Mom used to say that.”

“She also said problems always seem smaller in the morning than at midnight,” Tina pointed out. “It’s late. Let’s go to bed. We don’t have to figure anything out immediately.”

They had passed right over the issue of Graves, but as Tina settled into bed and swished out the light, she wondered about it. What _was_ she doing?

* * *

She was working on a case that had gotten more dangerous than anticipated, she concluded the next morning. That was what.

It was hard to know for sure, but the tests she was able to run on what was left of the _Weird Tales_ suggested that combustion had been the desired result of whatever Smith had done on the other end. So he had known that there was a very real danger of injuring someone - maybe more than one someone, maybe innocent bystanders - and hadn’t cared. Tina would need to be more careful.

It was strange, though. She really hadn’t seen the attack coming, and it wasn’t as though she was a fresh recruit, easily caught wrong-footed. She’d faced down her share of lawbreakers and desperate wizards before, and weathered their spells, too. But Smith didn’t seem like the sort to use overt violence. Sure, he sold deadly potions ingredients on the black market, and clearly he was fanatical about the privacy of his operation, but nothing about his history suggested that he would incautiously set fire to anyone, especially at a distance. It was so… Uncontrolled.

Tina paused in the middle of layering charms on a new surveillance pebble, arrested by the thought. Uncontrolled. When everything about Blandinus Smith was routine, and order, and focused effort.

The topmost charm skittered sideways somehow, and sent the pebble shooting up into the air, where it turned itself inside out, letting out a Bronx Cheer before raining back down to her desk in a shower of sand.

There was a startled silence, and then everyone in the bullpen started laughing. Tina stood up and took a bow, smiling ruefully. She could do with a little more focus herself, apparently. And maybe some coffee.

When she got back from her break, there was a quiet little mouse waiting for her, made of creamy linen paper. She unfolded it.

_Can you get away for a night without a curfew?_

It wasn’t signed, but it didn’t have to be. She had seen plenty of examples of Graves’s handwriting. She felt herself blushing, and looked guiltily around the room to see if anyone was watching her. No one was, of course. And when she looked back at the note, the words had vanished.

She scratched an answer - _Yes. Tonight?_ \- and refolded the mouse, and sent it back.

She had finished charming a new pebble, this time without incident, before the mouse came back. It had an address scribbled on it, and a name. “Mrs. Jones.” She creased it into an un-rodent-like square, and put it in her coat pocket.

She left work a little bit early that afternoon, for the first time since she’d been reinstated, and hurried home. She needed to pack an overnight bag, and leave a note for Queenie. She hoped her sister would be running late, herself. It would be so much easier if she didn’t have to explain herself in person.

The address in her pocket was for a hotel, as Tina had more or less guessed it would be. And they were expecting a Mrs. Jones, whose “husband” had already checked in.

What _was_ she doing? Tina asked herself, as she took a key, made her way to room 207.

Shacking up with her boss, apparently. That was what.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry this took so much longer to roll out than my chapters usually do! I hope you'll feel it was worth the wait.

(“ _He interrogated me constantly, not because he wanted to know anything really sensitive, but because he wanted to hear me talking. Wanted to sound as much like me as possible while he was stealing my face and my name._ ”)

* * *

Graves was waiting for her, sitting in an armchair by the window and reading the latest issue of _Weird Tales_. He looked up when she came into the room.

“I’m not sure what I think of your taste in reading material, Goldstein,” he said.

Tina shrugged. “It grows on you. The magic stories are always pretty funny, but I really like the space ones. Can you imagine, one day flying through the stars? That’s something beyond any wizardry.”

“Do you think No-Majs will make a machine that can do that?” Graves asked. He seemed genuinely curious, rather than incredulous.

“I do,” Tina said. “We don’t give them enough credit for inventiveness. Sure, we can do things they can only dream of, but we’re wearing clothes made from fabric their factories create, riding in taxis they built, walking on their paved streets and sidewalks…” She trailed off. Her opinions on this topic weren’t very popular.

“I hadn’t thought of it that way,” Graves said.

Tina shrugged again. “I think sometimes we’re, well, complacent. Wizards had a head start, but the No-Majs might catch up someday. They deserve some basic respect.”

“Not fear?” 

“Sometimes. You know I never thought the Second Salemers were a joke. But that doesn’t mean they’re all like that, or that they need to be--” She groped for the term she wanted. “Subjugated. It’s not as though we’re at _war_ with them.”

“Some of us have been,” Graves said mildly. “Both alongside and against.”

Tina flushed, and looked down. MACUSA’s official stance during the No-Majs’ Great War had been, as always, non-interference and isolation, but many young wizards and even witches had gone to aid friends and allies in Europe, unsanctioned. Tina knew that Graves had been one of them, though it wasn’t something he talked about.

“I’m sorry,” Tina said. “I just meant, we shouldn’t underestimate them, but we shouldn’t exaggerate potential danger, either. They’re just people. Like us.”

“I agree with you, as it happens,” Graves said. He set down the magazine and stood up, crossed the room to her. He touched the side of her face, smiling. “I must admit, I wasn’t really expecting a conversation about politics when I invited you here.”

“Why are we here?” Tina asked, sounding more baffled than coy.

“You have a roommate,” Graves said, taking Tina’s hat and coat. “And, apparently, an objection to my furniture.”

He was down to shirtsleeves and vest, having removed his own overcoat and suit jacket already. They were hanging up neatly, slate blue linings visible. He didn’t wear the white-lined suit anymore.

“It’s surprisingly, um, austere,” Tina said. She stopped herself from adding, _for a man with your expensive tastes in tailoring_.

Graves’s smile stiffened very slightly. “You would have liked my old place better, I think. The new apartment is the best I could do on short notice. I haven’t had time to look for anything nicer since I… Got back.”

Tina could have kicked herself. She knew he’d been discovered in a magically hidden room inside his own house, that Grindelwald had been living there the entire time he posed as Graves, but she somehow hadn’t put those facts together with the cheaply pre-furnished bachelor apartment she had seen.

“This is very nice,” she said, trying to recover the conversation. And it was. Whoever had decorated the hotel room had taste and an appreciation for little luxuries, unlike Graves’s landlord. Everything was bright and modern-looking, but with soft, welcoming touches in the upholstery of the chairs and the invitingly turned-down bed. Tina felt heat in her cheeks again. “Though I’m pretty sure they don’t believe my name is Mrs anything.”

“Is that okay?” Graves said. “I thought this was enough of a No-Maj establishment that your reputation wouldn’t be in danger.”

“It’s fine. I’m a modern woman, remember?” Tina put her arms around his neck and kissed him, before she could say something thoughtless again.

Graves pulled her close and returned the kiss. His hands roamed up and down her back, fingers splaying over her shoulder blades, her ribs, the curve of her waist. His body was warm and hard pressed against hers, and Tina wanted to feel more of it. She leaned back a little, just enough to fit her hands in between them, and unbuttoned his vest, his shirt, his union suit. Graves obligingly shrugged his arms free, and Tina pressed her palms to his bare skin, mapping the breadth of his shoulders, feeling the subtle flex of muscles in his arms and chest as he went to work on _her_ buttons.

“I’m starting to like this color,” Graves said, tracing the neckline of her orchid chemise. “I’ve never been fond of purple, but I’m learning.”

“I bet it would look good on you, if you’re that keen,” Tina said.

“What, purple? Or lingerie?” 

Tina blinked at him as she shrugged out of her blouse, not entirely sure whether or not he was joking. “I was thinking the color,” she said slowly, “but…”

Graves kissed her bare shoulder, reaching around her to unfasten her skirt. “I don’t have the chassis for it, sweetheart.” She could feel him smiling against her skin.

“Oh, be quiet and take your pants off,” Tina said.

Graves laughed at her, but obeyed.

They took their time, slowly revealing each other. They hadn’t actually had all of their clothes off yet, Tina realized. Even that first time she had still been wearing her stockings, and they hadn’t taken any time to really explore, in any case.

Graves seemed to be intent on making up for that. When their clothes were all at their feet, he tumbled her onto the bed and started kissing his way down from her collarbones.

“You’re beautiful,” he said, planting a kiss between her breasts.

Tina smiled, but shook her head in denial.

“And argumentative, too,” Graves said. “The total package.” 

Anything Tina might have said in response was lost on a wordless exhalation as Graves sucked one of her nipples into his mouth. He licked and nuzzled, and his hand was busy at her other breast, and she arched her back and let sensation take over.

After a little while, one of his hands wandered downward, stroking her belly, the rounding of her hip, her thighs. Tina was writhing on the bed a little bit by the time he finally slipped it between her legs, but even then he kept his touch light, slow. It was so… Gentle.

It wasn’t that Graves had been _rough_ with her before. But he hadn’t treated her like her body was fragile, like it might need coaxing. He had put his hands on her firmly, used his teeth, acted like he trusted that she knew her own needs and desires well enough to ensure her pleasure.

But now he was treating her like a complete innocent, like a--

 _Oh_ , Tina thought. _This one is for me._

“Is this good?” Graves asked.

“Yeah,” Tina said. She didn’t need this, not the same way that Graves needed to reclaim himself. But it was, well, sweet, that he wanted to do it for her. “Yes. It’s good.”

He used a little more pressure, stroking and rubbing, spreading her wetness. “And this?” he said, with the tip of one finger inside her, his thumb brushing lightly across her pearl.

Tina pushed up against his hand. “Yes. More.”

Graves pleasured her with excruciating tenderness, so slowly, so gently, that by the time he had two fingers all the way inside her she was trembling all over, clutching at his shoulders hard enough that she was sure she’d leave marks.

“Still okay?” he said, with his lips against her breast.

“Yes,” Tina gasped, and then Graves rubbed firmly with his thumb and her body tightened and tensed, and she saw stars behind her eyelids. 

“Now,” she said, when she had come back to herself. “Now, now.”

Graves grinned at her, and fitted his hips between her thighs. “Are you sure?”

“Yes, damn it,” Tina said, laughing, tangling her fingers into his hair and tugging him down for a kiss.

He closed his eyes as he slid into her, and moaned through parted lips. He covered her with his body, moving over her, in her, with a building rhythm. Tina wrapped her arms around him and held on. Soon she was near climax again, almost there, and she freed one hand, but their bodies were too tightly pressed together for her to touch herself where she longed for it.

“Percival,” she said, “oh, I need--”

“I know. I have you.” He slid a hand under her knee, urging her to lift her leg and hook it over his shoulder. The shift brought them impossibly closer, until each roll of his hips made her tremble. He licked her collarbone, panted out, “I’m not going to last.”

“Come with me, then,” Tina said, and led the way.

* * *

“Did you really not have any idea it wasn’t me?” Graves asked.

Tina had kicked the blankets off the bed at some point, but wasn’t yet cold enough to let it motivate her to get up and retrieve them. Graves still had her more or less pinned under him, anyway, which was surprisingly comfortable. Even with his choice of conversational opener.

“In hindsight… Your - his - behavior was a little strange. If I had thought for a moment someone _would_ impersonate you, I would have suspected. But I assumed you were just disappointed in me.”

“For...?”

“That dustup with the Barebones woman. I knew the moment I did it that I was going to be in for it, and I was, but I thought… I was surprised you didn’t fight harder for me. He didn’t. I messed up, but I thought you would understand why. That you would forgive me.” Tina rubbed her eyes, feeling the sting of the demotion again. “And then of course you were going to have me executed, which did seem wildly out of character. Can you even _do_ that?”

“No, of course not,” Graves said. “Can you imagine the abuses of power that would invite? No one at MACUSA can order and carry out an execution without any oversight at all.”

“I’m still pretty steamed that Bernadette was going to do it, even if she _was_ under Imperio,” Tina muttered. “I go to her book club!”

Graves kissed her temple. “I would have forgiven you,” he said. “Did. And I would have pushed to have you reinstated much sooner, had I been able. But I _was_ disappointed. The number of Obliviations I had to sign off on...”

“I know.”

“I did understand, though. Why you did it. And I went to check on the boy, his situation.” Graves paused. “I thought he was a Squib, actually. I was going to make a case to Markos in DCS that his welfare was our concern on that basis, but I never got the chance.”

“I didn’t think he was a Squib,” Tina said. “I didn’t think he was an Obscurial either, of course, I just mean that-- I thought he was a No-Maj. I didn’t break the law because I thought I was protecting a wizard’s child. I did it because I thought he needed protection, no matter who he was.” 

Graves let out a pained sigh. “Yes, Tina, I know that, though I fully intended to pretend otherwise.”

“Oh,” Tina said. “I… Oh.”

She wriggled out from underneath him and grabbed a handful of blanket. She was feeling much less comfortable.

“Tina,” Graves said. “Goldstein. I would have done the same thing for Brown, or Rodriguez, or any good, capable, boneheaded Auror who broke the law for the right reasons. One time.”

Tina climbed back into the bed. “All of us?”

“ _Once_ ,” Graves emphasized. “And only the ones worth covering for.”

“So, probably not Hanssen,” Tina said.

“Probably not. Though he may yet surprise me.”

“But you would look the other way for, say, O’Brien?”

Graves snorted. “No, he used his up. And it’s not looking the other way so much as it is giving a second chance. You would have heard a version of this speech from me after I managed to get you transferred back.”

Tina spread the blanket over both of them. “Doubtless with more clothes on.”

“You know I never rule any possibility out entirely.”

Tina smiled, and cuddled up to him again. “Thank you for telling me that,” she said, her smile fading away.

“About my one fuck-up policy?”

“Well, that too. But I meant that you went to check on Credence. It means a lot to me that someone else cared about what happened to him.”

“Ah,” Graves said. He pulled her close, tucking her back against his chest. “I wish I’d realized what was really going on, there.”

“Me, too. I wish… Lots of things.”

Graves pressed his face against the back of her neck. “My mother says that if wishes were broomsticks--”

“No-Majs would fly?” Tina laughed, a sad little hiccup of a sound that started to dissolve into tears almost immediately. “Mine, too. Funny.” She sniffed. “We killed him. He was just a kid, and _one of ours_ , and we ignored him, and then murdered him when he broke a law he didn’t even know existed.”

 _The same one I broke_ , she didn’t say.

“Tina…”

She could almost hear Graves marshalling arguments, arranging ideas to persuade her out of her grief, her guilt. But though he opened and closed his mouth a few times, in the end he didn’t try to convince her not to feel it. He just wrapped his arms around her more tightly, and held her until she had cried herself to sleep.

* * *

She woke again some time after midnight, and grimaced at the damp pillow under her head. Graves was breathing heavily in sleep, not quite snoring, but very near it. Tina flipped her pillow over and turned to look at him. He looked younger, asleep, with his forehead smooth, no sign of tension or frustration around his mouth. His lips were slightly parted, his hair in disarray. The sheets and blankets had twisted around their legs as they slept, and she admired the lines of his body in the dim light. He had a mole on the side of his hip, a hidden twin to the one on his cheek. She reached out and covered it fondly with the palm of her hand.

The tension rushed back into Graves’s face, and the muscles under her hand went rigid. His eyes opened, but Tina knew instantly that he wasn’t seeing _her_. His hand came up between them, lips forming a word even as Tina struggled to react.

“ _Confringo!_ ”


	6. Chapter 6

( _”The curses were bad, but the beatings were…” Graves trailed off._

_“I’m not willing to hurt you,” Tina said. It was the only interjection she had made._

_“Thank you,” Graves said. “I’m not a masochist.”_

_“Or be hurt.”_

_“God, no. No.”_

_“I just wanted to be clear,” Tina said._

_Graves tied another knot in the end of her scarf. “Clarity is good.”_ )

* * *

Tina kicked hard against the mattress, rolling off the side of the bed while casting a hasty, wandless Shield. Graves’s Blasting Curse caught her in the air, before she could put the bed between them. The brunt of it splashed out across her charm, but it still hit hard enough to throw her across the room. Her back slammed into the wall with bruising force, the air pushed from her lungs by the impact, and she fell to the floor, gasping. She barely registered the extra jolt of pain as a picture fell from the wall, the frame cracking into her shoulder on the way down.

There was no way she could match Graves wandless. She was seeing stars, but Tina fought against cramping muscles to suck in a lungful of air. “Accio wand!” she gasped, arm outstretched as she rolled up onto one knee, using the bed for cover.

She felt better with her wand in her hand, but she was beyond thankful when a second attack didn’t come. She took a moment to get her bearings, trying to breathe slowly and deeply.

Most of the furniture was still intact. Nothing was on fire. So far, so good. She couldn’t see Graves, but she knew he hadn’t Apparated away - she could hear him, sobbing for breath almost as hard as she had been. He must be on the floor, too, on the other side of the bed.

“Percival? Are you okay?” she called out.

“Am I...? Are you fucking kidding me?” He laughed brokenly. “Are _you_ okay? _Shit_. Oh, God. _Are_ you okay?”

“I’ve been better,” Tina said. “But I’ve also been worse.” She stood all the way up, remembering a little too late to watch out for glass from the picture frame, and hobbled around the foot of the bed.

Graves was crouched down with his back pressed against the wall, knees drawn up against his chest. He had his hands over his face, and Tina stopped herself from touching him, not wanting to startle him again.

“I could have killed you,” he said.

There was no good answer to that. “I know,” Tina said. “But you didn’t.” She pulled the top sheet off the bed, and held it out to him. “Here.”

Graves uncurled a little, and took it from her without meeting her eyes. Her hand left a smear of blood behind on the white fabric, and Tina winced a little at the sight. Her nerves were still high enough that she didn’t feel it yet, but wounds from broken glass always smarted like fire eventually.

“Hold on a moment,” Tina said, retreating to the other side of the bed. She needed to clean herself up a little, and make sure that she wasn’t ignoring anything serious. “Just, hold on.”

She used a variant on a Summoning charm to call all of the pieces of glass together, then quickly cast a light _Scourgify_ before doing _Reparo_ on the pile of shards. When she had been a trainee, she had once done the first and last step without the second during a cleanup of a crime scene, and ended up embedding pearly veins of Amortentia in a No-Maj storefront window.

It had been her first day partnered with Demetrius Rogers, a senior Auror of the very old school who had made it pretty clear that he was not yet sold on the idea of witches doing fieldwork. He had called her an idiot, but in a friendly way, and Tina liked to think that her record of no more than average incompetence for a rookie under his tutelage had helped soften his stance.

With all the glass out, it was easy to see that the little lacerations she had were superficial at worst. Some simple healing charms sealed them up, though the bruises from being Blasted into the wall would need an actual mediwizard. Or time.

She found her underthings and put them on, then went back to Graves. He was where she had left him, still huddled against the wall, though he had wrapped the sheet around himself.

“Can I sit?”

He nodded.

She sat on the floor next to him, hissing a little as the bruising on her ribs started to make itself felt. “Are you hurt at all?”

“No,” Graves said. “Are you?”

“A little. It’s okay.”

“It’s really not,” Graves said.

“No, you’re right,” Tina acknowledged. “But. It’s me. I’ve had worse. You know that.”

Graves curled in on himself a little more tightly. “How long... When will I go back to being myself again?”

Oh, crap. Tina sighed. “In my experience? Never. I’m sorry, but you don’t. You find a new version of yourself. And you go on from there.”

“ _Fuck_ ,” Graves said.

“Is it all right if I touch you?”

Graves flinched at the question, which made Tina simultaneously glad and sorry that she had asked.

“Yes,” he said, an instant later. “I won’t do that - whatever that was - again.”

Tina put her hand on his shoulder. “You might. Not right now, but some other time… It might happen again.”

“And that’s part of the new self, is it?” Graves’s voice was as sharp as the broken glass had been.

Tina ignored the baiting, and gently rubbed his back. “Maybe. The smell of bay rum aftershave still makes me sick, sometimes. Bay rum and gin together, forget it. I’ll upchuck every time.”

“Ugh,” Graves said.

“Ugh,” Tina agreed, though it wasn’t really clear if Graves was commenting on gin-drinkers wearing bay rum or on his own situation, or both. The noise of disgust seemed appropriate regardless. She squeezed his shoulder.

Graves reached for her hand and looked at her palm, tracing a faint line across the heel, the last remnant of what had been a fairly nasty slice. “Are you really okay?”

“I’m going to have some bruises. Nothing serious.”

Graves nodded, and kissed her palm before letting go of her hand. “That was a good wandless _Protego_. Very solid.”

“Thank you. Rogers spent my first month on the job throwing things at me at random intervals so I’d practice until it was automatic. I really got the hang of it the day he tossed a table at me.”

“Good old Demetrius,” Graves said.

“It was so strange to see him behind your desk,” Tina said. Rogers was the natural choice for interim Director, but it had been almost unsettling to see him sitting down in an office and not out on the street in his leather trench coat. “I can’t count the number of times I’ve heard him rant about never wanting to give up patrol.”

“Well, it’s the most essential part of law enforcement,” Graves said, in a way that was not quite an impression, but came very close. “Without a street presence, those jackasses in expensive suits upstairs might as well be wearing blindfolds.”

Tina laughed. “I felt so guilty when I had to tell him that I was going to be one of those jackasses. I’m sure I was a huge disappointment to him.”

“Nah, he was proud of you,” Graves said. “Still is. He wouldn’t have given the Smith case to just _any_ jackass.”

“I’m sure it helped that no one else would take it,” Tina said.

“Mm,” Graves said. “No one else was solving it, either.”

Tina ducked her head, letting her hair fall forward to hide her face. She could feel herself blushing, and a flicker of embarrassment threatened to overwhelm the satisfaction she felt at the idea that both Rogers and Graves had confidence in her skills as an Auror. Realizing that Graves could probably see the flush of red spreading down over her neck and upper chest because she was nearly naked made it worse. She deliberately straightened up, pushed her hair back.

“Well.” She cleared her throat. “I don’t know about you, but I’m getting a little cold, sitting here.”

Graves frowned, but didn’t say anything, and followed her back to the bed. When they had the covers spread over them, he pulled her in close against his chest, pressed his face to the back of her neck.

His propensity for cuddling was even more of a surprise than the occasional burst of silliness, Tina thought. Though it wasn’t exactly _cuddling_ \- just, Percival liked to touch. He liked to twine his fingers through hers, liked to press the lengths of their bodies together, liked her hands in his hair. And it wasn’t just about sex.

How long had it been since he had been so casually physical with someone? Hadn’t he missed it?

“Earlier, you asked if I had any idea it wasn’t you,” Tina said, quietly enough that Graves could pretend to be asleep if he didn’t want to talk about it.

He made a noise of acknowledgement.

“I was just… Wasn’t _anyone_ suspicious?”

Graves’s arms tightened around her. “Are you asking how it was possible that no one in my life noticed that I was gone?”

“I’m sorry,” Tina said. “Never mind.”

“No, it’s a fair question.” She could feel him shrugging. “I don’t know. I didn’t realize-- I didn’t feel isolated.”

“You have family…”

“Yes. But not in New York. We’ve owned a house here since MACUSA relocated from Washington, but I’m the only one living in the city at the moment.” Graves paused. “I have a cousin Upstate, I think.”

“But what about friends?” Tina asked. “Girlfriends?”

Graves let go of her and rolled over onto his back. “I’ve been focused on my career. First on getting promoted to head of the department, and then on running the damned thing. It doesn’t leave a lot of time for anything else.”

Tina turned over so that she could look at him. “It must leave _some_ time,” she said softly.

“If I’d known it would be so fucking important for the country’s security, I would have joined a fucking Quodpot league or something,” Graves snapped.

“The country did just fine. It’s _you_ I’m worried about, you schmuck!”

Tina clapped her hand over her mouth and looked at Graves with widened eyes. He stared back.

“I can’t believe I just said that,” she said through her fingers. “My mother would be so disappointed in me.”

Graves started laughing.

“Stop,” Tina said, though she was starting to giggle, herself. “She really would! She raised me better than that.”

“Yes,” Graves said solemnly. He pulled her hand away from her face and kissed her. “You’re such a _good_ girl.”

Tina curled her fingers around his. She tipped her head back when he nudged her chin with his nose, felt his lips at her throat. “Woman.”

“Woman,” Graves agreed. He slid down the bed, down her body, and kissed her through the fabric of her drawers. “Yes?”

“Well, I suppose I could allow it,” Tina said. “Since it makes you so happy.”

Graves looked up at her, waiting.

“Yes,” Tina said. “Please.”

* * *

Graves fell asleep again almost immediately after they were both satisfied. Tina watched his chest rising and falling as he snored, and kept her hands to herself.

 _What are_ we _doing?_ she wondered, before deciding that she was too tired to answer herself. Morning would be better than midnight. She slipped her wand under her pillow, and closed her eyes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am so incredibly sorry to have left y'all hanging on that cliff for so long after the last chapter! I can't promise it won't happen again (I really wasn't anticipating the wide variety of odd things that took over all my free time the past month), but I do promise that I am not abandoning this story, and I will definitely _try_ to get chapters out more quickly. Thanks for sticking with me. Knowing you are reading gives me all the feels.  <3


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